Disruptive Innovation
Capturing the benefits of advanced reactors on the needed timeline requires an emphasis on “disruptive innovation” for deployment and utilization of the technology.
Advanced reactors build on the safety record of existing nuclear power facilities to provide even safer risk profiles. This risk reduction, coupled with modern monitoring and control technology, provides the opportunity to reshape how nuclear technology is developed, regulated, deployed, and operated. Changing how advanced reactors are pursued and viewed is important to achieve leveraged benefits—including easing of deployment challenges, accelerating deployments, and increasing costcompetitiveness, all while increasing safety and reliability. The opportunities to change the game in advanced reactors are related to the elements listed in the preceding section, but they are also important strategic enablers themselves. Most importantly, changing the game involves shifting industry paradigms and practices in a sustained manner that encourages innovation, further strengthens the industry, and increases the benefits and utilization of advanced reactors. Important opportunities to change the game and enable the deployment of advanced nuclear technologies include:
IN THE DESIGN AND ENGINEERING OF ADVANCED REACTORS
Increased standardization in designs, achieving the goal of “design and license once, use many;” a limited portfolio of designs each tailored to needed use-cases, reducing the need for use-specific design and licensing, and improving the business case for the application; large and ample design margins that facilitate and enable wide deployment envelopes, both for potential sites and potential uses; a risk-informed approach to quality assurance that avoids undesired bleed over of detailed nuclear quality requirements into the non-nuclear systems and equipment; and importantly, the design, licensing, and operational separation of the nuclear energy portion of a facility supplying energy from the non-nuclear portion using that energy, enabling significant cost savings and increased operational flexibility.
IN THE REGULATORY REVIEWS AND LICENSING OF ADVANCED REACTORS
Increased efficiency of regulator reviews through risk-informed approaches; effective and agile reviews of diverse technologies and use-applications; and NRC review schedules that reliably and predictably support mission objectives. The U.S. goal shall be to license advanced reactors, that have previously been approved, in 12 months or less from submittal to approval (that is, no longer than 12 months for both the safety and environmental reviews), with the understanding that initial applications of a design and early applications may take longer as the regulators streamlines their processes. Canada continues to work on streamlining their regulatory approval process.
IN THE DEPLOYMENT OF ADVANCED NUCLEAR TECHNOLOGY IN THE FIELD
Shift from an approach of “procure and construct” complex facilities to “manufacture and assemble components, then install them in a constructed structure”; implement a risk-informed and graded approach to oversight and quality assurance; and inculcate a culture that embraces the value of project management and risk mitigation rather than simply being activities that are done on the project.
IN THE OPERATIONS AND MAINTENANCE (O&M) OF ADVANCED NUCLEAR TECHNOLOGIES
Greatly reduced facility staffing levels and maintenance costs; streamlined qualification requirements for staff through a graded and risk-informed approach; and maintenance philosophies consistent with industrial facilities for comparable systems and components, that still deliver required levels of equipment reliability.
IN THE OWNERSHIP AND BUSINESS MODELS FOR ADVANCED NUCLEAR TECHNOLOGIES
Enabling and delivering to benefit “new to nuclear” owners; reducing the hurdles to ownership of an advanced reactor facility; and creating the opportunity for “energy as a service.”
Capturing these disruptive innovations to create opportunities and “change the game” are requisites for success. Without achieving these big picture and cultural shifts as part of the near-term and mid-term deployments, long-term success and large-scale deployments (that is, “expand”) are unlikely.
Rising to the Occasion
The success of advanced reactors relies on evolving, strengthening, and sustaining industry culture. The industry’s pursuit of operational excellence has served the industry well; excellence is needed across the activities required for successful commercialization and the high levels of safety and reliability, which are hallmarks of the industry, must be maintained. To achieve the vision of success, leverage the benefits of advanced technology, and build confidence and credibility, some elements of the culture must continue to evolve.
Examples of evolution that will enable enhanced effectiveness include:
- Being able to separate the scope of nuclear safety and radiological hazards from normal industrial activities and apply the rigor and levels of quality assurance appropriate to each. Shifting from a model of building large “one-off” plants on site, to assembling factory made plants
- Shifting from an attitude and culture of “constructing nuclear power plants” to “assembling industrial facilities with radiological hazards”
- Being unrelenting in driving the industry to be risk-informed and technology-inclusive with the regulator
- Understanding that external stakeholders can have very different perceptions and views of nuclear technology than industry participants
- From an education and communications perspective, having a proactive posture in engagements with external stakeholders and the public and sharing the contributions and accomplishments of nuclear energy and the industry team, and the larger impacts offered by advanced reactors
- Truly achieving the objective of standardization of nuclear technology designs without continual refinement and modification • Recognizing the value and importance of government support to accelerate commercialization with policies that are equitable for nuclear and other clean energy sources
- Avoiding overpromising or underperforming. The industry cannot tolerate either, and history suggests that it is vulnerable to both in the deployment of advanced reactors
These culture evolutions are needed to achieve success; enabling and sustaining the changes is a fundamental role of industry leadership.
Establish, Advance, Expand
To enable and ensure the needed timeliness and to build both capability and the needed confidence, the industry’s commercialization plans must be framed to allow a realistic, phased, and risk-managed approach to deploying advanced nuclear technology.
More specifically:
- Establish wins on early mover and early finisher deployments (both first-of-a-kind [FOAK] and fast followers) to build a firm foundation and increase stakeholder confidence
- Advance from the established foundation to include multiple projects, deployments, and uses of advanced nuclear technology
- Expand to deliver at needed scale to meet the demands of the future energy landscape
This EAE strategy provides important benefits, including:
- Helping to ensure the most important accomplishments are achieved on the needed timelines
- Prioritizing industry efforts and actions
- Assisting in managing stakeholder expectations of what will be accomplished and when
- Most importantly, avoiding an early “all in” approach of attempting too much, too soon, and at the same time
A primary focus is on the industry first establishing a firm foundation, and while establishing it, to pursue a level of simplicity such that wins can be captured and the first deployments will occur as planned. Attempting to take on too many complexities or attempting to expand too widely prior to establishing the foundation of capability and the wins that build confidence threatens delays and costs to the individual projects. These delays jeopardize the overall industry deployment and raise the likelihood of missing the needed time window for deployments. The EAE strategy is intended to provide the framework to enable sustained and large success.
Although the high-level EAE approach has a clear end goal of deployments to meet the demands of 2050, the phased EAE strategy and approach also apply to lower-level accomplishments and workstreams that the industry must advance to achieve those deployments. Examples include:
- Scale of deployment: Transitioning from FOAK and early-mover projects with offset intervals, to multiple projects in parallel to widespread deployment of a design
- NRC and CNSC processes: In the U.S, using the known Part 50 and Part 52 processes, crafting with the NRC an optimized Part 53, and realizing the expected and needed predictability of NRC reviews. In Canada, applying the CNSC risk-informed, gradedapproach, and alternative approaches that are possible within the regulatory framework, but which to date have not been applied to advanced reactors, and addressing timing challenges with the Impact Assessment Act
- NRC and CNSC throughput: Increasing the efficiency and throughput of regulatory reviews, advancing from FOAK applications to multiple applications (or fleet application) of previously approved designs, to predictable reviews of many different types of technologies at multiple application volumes
- Design standardization: Creating FOAK designs that balance the speed to market and market coverage, and after deployment of a large number of standard, first-series of the designs, then consider enhancing the design
- Regulatory alignment: NRC and CNSC collaborating on aligning the regulatory review processes to enable expedited reviews and capacity to accept and utilize each other’s work
While moving through the EAE phased approach for these discrete topics, the industry must also be continually strengthening and expanding its capacity—in the spirit of the EAE strategy—in important areas identified in the roadmap, such as project management performance, supply chain robustness, and recruiting and training the needed workforce of the future.
Finally, while executing the roadmap, the industry must always look beyond the current phase and proactively address the needs of subsequent phases. It must also focus on advancing the lower-level workstreams, not simply the high-level achievements.
De-risking Projects for Owners
Customers are moving cautiously to make deployment decisions as advanced reactor programs mature. This can create an expected rapid increase in the demand for advanced reactors after success on the initial deployments.
The parallel goals of accelerating initial deployments, flattening the demand peak for new reactors at a sustainable level of new plants coming online each year, and enabling an early foundation for success will require the industry to achieve near-term and mid-term successes that build the confidence of key stakeholders internal and external to the industry and establish a record of success that the industry can deploy advanced reactors to meet customer expectations.
Customers of advanced reactors will remain cautious until a firm foundation is established and early mover and early finisher successes strengthen industry expertise and capability. Prior to the first projects being completed, customers, investors, and other stakeholders will need to gain confidence through the reduction and mitigation of first-mover risks. Developing advanced nuclear project deployment plans that achieve an equitable sharing of risk among customers, suppliers, contractors, financial institutions, and other stakeholders, including financial targets and models that result in cost-competitive products, along with defining the companion project execution and governance models, is a critical need. Extensive numbers of lessons learned from evaluations, reports, and recommendations from previous deployment of nuclear technology are available to owners, technology vendors, constructors, contractors, and other stakeholders. These recommendations were all developed with the mission to derisk future projects. It is imperative in the strategy that industry and owners use these valuable resources.
Early Success to Build a Foundation and Confidence
To ensure more opportunities for and delivery on wins, increased confidence in the industry’s ability to deliver among stakeholders and customers is critical. To build this confidence, the industry needs to deliver on the work it is doing, which, realistically, will occur only if wins have been achieved (and orders received).
The solution to this chicken-and-egg challenge (need work to build stakeholder confidence, but do not have opportunity to do work without stakeholder confidence) necessitates the strategy to build wins and strengthen the industry in a sequential, incremental manner that also continually derisks projects for owners. This confidence factor and how it is developed are also key in evolving the culture of the industry to succeed and thus in the successful delivery of nuclear technology.
Increasing stakeholder confidence is particularly important from a business case and project definition perspective. By building increased confidence, there will be more orders and investment in advanced reactors, more projects will move through the deployment cycle and provide important lessons, more challenges will be overcome, and the industry will be best positioned and prepared to meet its full potential.
Securing early and frequent “wins” is a fundamental need for establishing a foundation of industry success.